How We Live Now
by sara-cupcaked
Summary: She is wearing the Williams College sweatshirt again, and he has to wonder, despite her assurances, if her leaving is his punishment. 10X04, GSR.


**A/N:** Thank you, Keegan, for reading this through for me. Hang tight, this is angst, baby.

How We Live Now

She comes home two weeks too early, on a rainy Sunday.

"Hi," she says, a little out of breath as she lugs in her suitcase through their apartment door, her hair damp and a mess of wavy curls. "I'm back."

He's in the middle of a glass of Pinot noir, and his hand, along with a nearly-drained wineglass, stills in the air. "You're here."

They hear nothing but the falling rain, the clink of the glass being set back down, the wheels of the suitcase on a wooden floor, the quiet closing of the front door.

Two distinct footsteps: one set muffled by socks, the other clear and smooth heading towards the bedroom, the quiet swish of clothes hitting the floor, a sigh.

No words are spoken as the covers are pulled back, as the rain continues to pound steadily against the glass panes, as evening bleeds into night. It doesn't escape their notice that their opening words were almost distant; that no one said the word 'home' when it easily could have been used as she stepped through the doorway or when he first set his sight on her.

--

He makes them green tea for breakfast, Monday morning.

"I expected you to be in Vegas longer," he says, handing her a steaming mug.

"I missed you," she says with a nod of thanks, taking the cup from his hand. She adds, after a beat and a sip of hot tea, "I'm going back next week."

Searing heat makes its way down his throat as he accidentally tips the mug back too much, and it travels all the way past his throat, heart, and settles somewhere deep within his bones. "What?"

"There's too much to do there," she says quietly, not backing down from his gaze.

"We both knew what we were giving up," he replies, just as calmly.

She's silent, but her knuckles are clenched white and her eyes are cool, and he can see she's angry. There's also a truth behind her eyes he cannot deny, and he drops his gaze but it's too late, the damage is done.

_You chose to give it up. _I_ was forced to give it up._

They sit in the silence; their tea left untouched on the table, until they are as cold as the air surrounding them.

--

They keep missing each other on Tuesday and Wednesday: he because of his hectic schedule of lectures and impromptu Q&A sessions with the students, her because of her gallivanting around Parisian grounds.

He broaches the subject on Thursday, another rainy day.

"I don't want to fight."

"Me neither," she says, rinsing the dishes and placing them carefully into the dishwasher.

"But we are."

She sighs. "Yes."

"How long are we going to do this?"

"The fighting part or the part about me leaving?"

"If you stay, we'll stop fighting."

She wipes her wet hands across the front of the worn sweater – deep purple with the words 'Williams' printed in faded block letters, white – and sighs yet again.

"And then what? It's not that simple, Gil."

"What can we do?"

Sara turns away from the sink and makes her way towards the couch, and he follows behind her, suddenly weary. She settles down on the couch and pulls him down with her, wrapping her warm fingers around his own.

"Were you angry, when I first left? Honestly."

He thinks back to the day at Charles De Gaulle, his palms pressed against the glass as he watched the plane ascend into the air, at the start of its journey that would end with her a time zone, an Atlantic ocean and five thousand miles away. The sadness was palpable in the air, but anger was not an emotion he associated with that day, or any other day until the day she returned and broke the _latest_ news.

While they share a life together in Paris, an apartment and a last name (informally), he understands that it is still her life.

"No."

"Well, you're going to get angry," she says, playing with the hem of the sweater, which is fraying. "You'll also wonder, at every interval, if it is something you've done."

He swallows the sudden lump in his throat, and she lifts her head and stares him straight in the eye. "And you need to know, now, that it's not. I'm doing this for me."

"It will get worse before it gets better, and I'm sure that they're other things you'll feel, all of them not very pleasant, but those are the main two emotions. The anger – it will last the longest."

The tone of her voice is not bitter, nor melancholic, but matter-of-fact, and somehow, it resonates deeper and hits harder. "Sara…I'm sorry."

She grips his hand tighter in hers, their wedding bands clinking together as she leans into him, smelling of shampoo and faint detergent and home. "Me too."

--

Sara leaves on that Saturday morning, when blue skies are covered by delicate wisps of rain clouds.

He sees her off, right until the departure gate, and watches as the group of people slowly make their way in. I'll miss you, he says before she stepped into the waiting hall, and she presses a palm to his cheek. I'll be home soon.

Inside, she lingers, until she's one of the last to board, and steps up to hand the airhostess her ticket.

She turns to him as the airhostess in blue verifies the piece of paper that will send her across the sea. Sara slowly raises her hands, crossing them across her chest. _Love you_, she signs, and with that, she's gone.

She's wearing the Williams College sweater again, and he has to wonder, despite her assurances, if her leaving is his punishment.

--

He lectures around forty students each class, and in one of his classes sits a student, Cecile David. She's a quiet girl who possesses clear grey eyes and auburn hair. Nothing about her should remind him of Sara, yet she does, in the most subtle of ways: she wears her hair in a ponytail to every class.

On a Tuesday, she finally raises up her hand to ask a question. It's about the classification of insects, and he answers it to the best of his ability. Ten minutes later, the bell rings and he heads home. It's a ten-minute walk, and the voices start:

_She's not punishing me. It's not even about _me_, remember?_

He lets himself in with an old brass key, toes out of his shoes, and reaches slightly to the right to turn on the lights. Six and a half steps later and he's in their tiny kitchen, drawing a random mug from the shelf next to the fridge.

_If you love someone, you let them go. I love her; I'm letting her go. _

The smug voice adds without a beat: _She never asked you. _

It's white porcelain on the outside but milky brown on the inside, weathered and stained from many cups of coffee (and green tea).

It's heavy, a comforting weight in his palm, even without liquid. Abandoning the last pretense of restraint, he flings the mug across the room, leaving a deep, half-moon fracture in a side table before shattering across the parquet flooring.

It's the loudest thing he's heard in weeks, and he calmly steps over the shards and walks into the empty bedroom where a throbbing migraine awaits.

Two Tuesdays and a Wednesday later, Sara Sidle pushes her key into the lock and quietly lets herself in. It's close to midnight, and she walks over and flips on a lamp on the side table closest to her.

The first thing she sees is fragments of some sort, scattered all across the floor.

The second is the sight of Grissom, messy-haired and red-eyed, pulling open the bedroom door. His voice is hoarse, and up close, his eyes are shining a dull blue.

"How do we do this?"

**END**


End file.
